Lead assignment

Many legacy CRMs and sales tools maintain a strict relationship between a Lead/Contact/Account and the responsible sales person.

Close.io takes a more dynamic approach to this problem allowing you to decide between traditional static assignment, powerful dynamic assignment based on Lead metadata, random assignment using a search keyword or automated assignment using Zapier.com.

1. Dynamic Assignment (Recommended)

Dynamic assignment uses some data or known information about a lead rather than an arbitrary process to assign leads. By determining the criteria used to assign a lead, we can create a search query, and subsequently a Smart View, to view all of the leads which should be assigned to a member of the team.

Example:

Within your company, sales is split by region within the United States with another team member handling all International sales. Alice is responsible for the Western U.S. region. Finding leads for Alice is as simple as the search query state:WA or state:"OR" or state:CA By storing this query as a Smart View called "Alice's Leads" we can have the same benefits as lead assignment with the added benefit that if Alice leaves the company it's easy to rename the Smart View or divide up her leads among the remaining team members (Oregon goes to Bob, California goes to Karl, and Washington goes to Lisa and so on).

Another added benefit to this dynamic approach is that leads are "automatically" assigned. There is no longer a need for the sales manager to explicitly assign leads; as leads are being created/added into Close.io their metadata is being used to drop them into the right Smart Views.

2. Static Assignment

The traditional method of manual/static assignment is still possible within Close.io through the use of Custom Fields. You can create a custom field of type "User" and set its value to a particular sales person on each lead. You can then create a smart view to search for leads assigned to a given user name or to "me". To assign leads in-bulk, use our Bulk Edit/Update capability from the search page: http://help.close.io/customer/portal/articles/1405775 -- create an "Assignee" custom field in the customizations settings, choosing "User" as the type, then construct a search query to gather all of the leads a particular user should be assigned to, and click the Bulk Actions -> Bulk Edit/Update -> Update Custom Field.

3. Random Lead Assignment

Using the ‘Slice’ keyword

If you have ever wanted to split a list of leads among multiple salespeople, the ‘Slice’ keyword may help. ‘Slice’ is great when you want to make sure the same people aren't working on the same leads.

Ex. If you had a Smart View called "Hot Leads" that you wanted to split up among 3 different people (without overlapping).

Rep 1 could use a query slice:1/3 in:"Hot Leads" to get one third of the leads, Rep 2 could use slice:2/3 in:"Hot Leads" to get a different third of the leads, and so on. Any new leads added to the smartview will automatically be distributed in one of the slices.

Note: the number of leads in each "slice" may not be exactly equal because ‘Slice’ is more concerned about making sure the same lead never appears in different slices, even if the query after the slice keyword is different.

You may also assign the leads from a slice to a Lead Owner via the Bulk Edit features.

4. Automated Lead Assignment with Zapier

Using Zapier, you can automate random lead assignment. Here is an example Zap that randomly assigns leads from a Smart View to one of your reps.

1. Set up Lead Owner custom field in Close.io Settings. Make it a User field.

2. Setup a Zapier.com account and create a new Zap.

For your “Trigger”, select Close.io from the list of apps and choose the “New Lead” trigger from the List

For your “Set Up”, choose “Use a Custom Value” for the “Query” section and enter a following search query: not has:"custom.Lead Owner" sort:-created

2. Choose An Action Step.
For the “Action” step, select the “Formatter by Zapier” app. Select “Utilities” from the list.

In the “Edit Template” view, select “Pick from list” in the “Transform” field, “Choose Random” from the “Operation” Field and in the “ Input” field, add the names of all your reps exactly as they appear on your Team & Plans page in Close.io.

3. The Final Action Step

For the final “Action” step select Close.io from the list of apps and choose the “Update Lead” trigger from the List.

For the template, select “Step 1 ID” for the “Lead ID” field and “Step 2 Output” for “Lead Owner” Field